wore a fixed, flabbergasted look, the look of a father-to-be who has been pacing around outside the maternity ward waiting to hear if it was a boy or a girl only to be told that it was three of each.
“There’s a noise-abatement policy in these parts, I believe,” he said, his voice raised over a clamour Sean couldn’t detect. The air close to Sean’s left eye was shearing, as though he was looking through a window with a flaw in the glass. “I did not,” continued de Fleche, “wait two decades to come back to this place just to have some scarface twerp fuck it all up for me. Desist. Forthwith. Or I shall smite thee with a big stick.”
The air was rippling now, as unstable as the skin in a pan of boiling milk.
“Who are you going to mess with?” de Fleche asked. “Me? What did I do? Or would you rather mess with the man who killed your girl?”
Sean’s lips faltered on the whistle. The tremor in the air grew still.
“Don’t listen to him, Sean,” Will said, levelly. “Believe him and we’re all finished.”
Sean moved the whistle away. “What’s he talking about?”
“He showed me what happened that night. He fed me into the bedroom where Naomi died. He was in me. He was using me. I couldn’t do anything.”
Sean’s lips had turned white. “You killed her?”
“I didn’t kill her,” Will said, holding out his hands. “De Fleche killed her. But he was in me when he did it.”
Sean said, “What do I do, Will? Who do I believe?”
Will pressed his lips together. He closed his eyes. “He killed her. But the coward he is, he needed someone else to hide behind. A glove puppet. Me. It’s why you couldn’t remember my face. Because you weren’t just looking at my face. You were looking at his too.”
De Fleche said, “Yeah, and if you believe that, then I’ve got a tin of tartan paint I want to sell you.”
Sean returned the whistle to his lips. He blew, harder than before. The ripples returned.
“Hey,” de Fleche said. “Did you hear what I told you? Front-page news. Your killer is sitting in the dirt. Blood on his hands.”
De Fleche was approaching too rapidly to see the change. And when he did notice what was happening, he was too close to Sean to be able to escape the consequences.
The surgeon stepped out of the buckle in the air, clutching his battered leather medical bag, his stained green mask thankfully concealing an area of his face that was too loose, too wet. Sean heard a deep clack of teeth, too deep to be contained by any kind of mouth that he knew. Words came, coated in saliva so mangled by moisture that Sean couldn’t understand them. Instead of asking him to repeat himself, and too fearful to take his eyes off de Fleche, who was transfixed by the new arrival, Sean said, “Harvest all you like.”
He moved away as the surgeon magicked a scalpel with a bloody edge from the air and carved into the space that de Fleche filled. He wished de Fleche’s screams were beyond the capacity of his ears, as the whistle had been, but not as much as the other things he had been wishing for lately.
“Listen,” Will said, standing in front of Sean but looking over his shoulder at whatever awful scene was being played out. “Thanks. But it’s not over yet.”
Sean shook his head. “It is for me. I’m tired. I’ve had enough. Emma. Emma’s dead and I can’t go on any more. I’ve seen too much of this. Too many people down. More than most. More than you’d see in a fucking war.”
“These dead, these leaks. They all need to go home. They need to be sent back home. You’re the only person who can do it.”
“I want nothing to do with those freaks. No offence intended.”
“None taken. Look, Sean, you have to do it. You know it. Deep down you know it.”
Sean sighed. “Not that deep.”
They went over to the taxi and silently took in the small figure slumped across the back seat. Sean said, “Her too?”
Will said, “She isn’t dead.”
Sean stepped away from him and closed his eyes. “Don’t give me some fucking hippy shite about her being alive in my mind, Will, or I swear, I’ll piss on your grave.”
“She isn’t dead.”
Sean looked at him.
Will said it again, and then, “
Sean did as he was told. There were more of the fibres than he had expected. He thought they had maybe caught in her lips when she was being dragged out of the noose, but he could see that they had been placed there with purpose, a great knot of hemp pressed into her gullet.
“Make sure you get it all out,” Will ordered.
Sean picked fibres from her teeth and from beneath her swollen, purple tongue. Her face was cold, waxen. Her mouth was as stiff as two slugs perished with salt. He lurched away, swearing and kicking out at the car and at Will.
“I’ve had enough,” he yelled. “I can’t take this any more. Nobody should have to... I mean, there’s a limit. It’s unbearable.”
“I know, I know,” Will soothed. “I know, I promise you.”
He waited until Sean had chased the anger and the fear out of his body, and then he said again, “She’s not dead.”
Sean went back and wordlessly finished the job. As soon as her mouth was empty, he slunk away to the shade of a shop front and sat down in the dust and cried into his hands. He didn’t stop. Not even when Emma slowly uncoiled herself from the back seat and, blinking the sunshine out of her eyes, trudged across the road to sit next to him and rest her head against his shoulder.
WHEN HE HEARD Will tell him what he had to do, he couldn’t accept it.
“The rope?” he said. “This rope? It was meant to kill me and Emma. And you’re saying it’s what I need to send the dead back to where they need to be? So we’re both the same kind of animal. I’m walking. I’m breathing fresh air, but I tell you kidder, there’s fuck all beating in the middle of my chest. I go to bed at night not hearing it. My headaches don’t contain a beat. If there’s a rhythm to life, I’ve lost mine.”
Will nodded, pressing the coils back into Sean’s hand. Emma was long gone. She had promised to wait for Sean, but couldn’t go with him. How could he complain?
“I won’t leave you, Sean,” Will said. “I’ll be your eyes and ears from now on. I’ll lead you on. I’m your friend. No matter what state we’re in.”
Sean stared up at him. He was like a little boy, lost, separated from the people who loved him and might protect him from harm.
Will said, “Tie a knot. I’m first.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: ROPE
ALL OF HIS horizons seemed the same, of late. Viewed under an ochre smog at dusk, the crenellations of tower blocks provided different backgrounds to the same story. Faded clothes fluttered on balconies. The ghosts of piss clouted him at the thresholds of those lifts that worked. His boots created a brittle symphony from the insect corpses underfoot. It was hard to find any comfort in the routine. His composure was found in the simple succour of his tools. That and the friend in his head.
Maybe the wood, over the years, had been eroded by his grip; that was why the baseball bat felt so comfortable as it was hefted. Ditto the blade, which might as well have been knitted into the flesh of his palm: he
